


In Darkness I Saw Her Face

by HecoHansen31



Category: The Last Kingdom (TV)
Genre: Ghosts, Historically Inaccurate, Mention of Kidnapping, Multi, OOC Brida, Violence, mention of murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:07:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25189189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HecoHansen31/pseuds/HecoHansen31
Summary: Set up after Brida is taken by the Welsh and in darkness she saw the face of somebody who she helped destroying, coming back to her as a ghost, to haunt her or reveal her the truth.
Relationships: Brida/Cnut, Brida/Ragnar the Younger (The Last Kingdom), Brida/Skade
Kudos: 6





	In Darkness I Saw Her Face

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kingwellsjaha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kingwellsjaha/gifts).



Brida looked out in the darkness of the hole she had been caged in.

Again, a slave, again at the service of others.

And again in nothing more than shit and piss.

But this time she was a fully-grown woman, her swollen belly telling the for ever proof of her innocent sin.

Sin was a Christian word she had always hated and rejected, why should she feel bad for the smallest thing?

But now …

… now she couldn’t help but feel like she must have had some kind of sin to take care of, as her life run in a constant cycle, of betrayal and imprisonment.

The collar around her neck was too tight, as the chains around her wrists, but what truly pained her in her whole body was the knowledge of having the child of the man who had set up her lover’s murder.

She was carrying the child of the man who had killed her beloved Ragnar, the man to whom she couldn’t give any child, letting him seed other women, one after the other, faceless and useful just for one purpose.

She had hated them with a blind hate that had always started from her cursed womb, that couldn’t hold a child.

That couldn’t create life.

But she had loved the children, although she hadn’t been able to be in their lives, Ragnar sending them to various relatives in order to allow them to live far away from the war, which had been a smart decision, although Brida had been greatly pained by it.

Each time she was close to one child, Ragnar would rip them away from her, and the cycle of him seeding another woman would be set up again, as after Summer came Autumn and then painful Winter.

And she saw another woman swell up, meanwhile she remained slender.

And now she was pregnant with her lover’s murder.

Sometimes Destiny was nothing more than a mad man playing cards.

Not knowing how to deal with a good pair but making the worst of a horrible hand.

And right when she had almost won everything, she had lost everything she had fought to conquer.

Even herself.

So, now she looked out at the darkness, knowing that it’d take her soon.

But the darkness had a face, a familiar shape she had cursed and helped to destroy.

So, it was only natural that now it haunted her.

Like a ghost.

Skade’s pretty face looked back at her, but where she expected to find a smirk, she only found a desolated expression, as if she knew all too well about this kind of cruelty she had set up on herself and the darkness and what it brought with itself.

Madness.

She was sure as hell going mad.

“… shouldn’t you be happy” commented tightly Brida, eventually choosing to approach the woman in front of her, her words biting and cruel, almost the savage bark of an hungry dog, promising to chew on her bones “… I’ll be soon dead, as you have said”.

“I said that I would have killed you” Skade’s words were attentive, almost as if she had to point them out, one by one, and Brida rolled her eyes at her theatrics.

That was probably what had brought her and Uhtred together.

“… different words, same ending” replied the woman that had become Danish through service and blood spilled, and now didn’t know what she could make with that identity “… I’ll die here, alongside with my pup”.

She was almost sad for that child who would have never woken up, although she knew she should have been disgusted of it, because it was the child of a traitor and a murderer.

But would it have been different had it been born from Ragnar?

He had murdered Kjartan in cold blood and he had betrayed the vow of fidelity he had done to her.

And although she refused to be annoyed by it as a prissy Christian bride, she certainly hadn’t felt comfortable seeing him enjoy one woman after another.

‘When will it be enough?’ she wanted to ask Ragnar, each time he said ‘simply one more’.

But she had kept her voice down, because she had always thought that she was the one flawed, the one who couldn’t give him children.

And since she couldn’t, he’d always find somebody else who could give them to him.

She would have never been his equal, no matter how much she wanted to believe it.

In the end, she had been made a slave by his family.

Could she seriously expect respect and equality from him?

“… you won’t die here” commented Skade, as she looked up to where the noise of a feast resounded loudly.

“Did you talk about it with the Valkyries when you died?” spoke back loudly Brida, knowing that she must have sounded like an hysterical, cackling as Skade’s pretty face became scrunched up by a frown “… but wait… you weren’t sent to Valhalla, were you? Uthred drowned you… he killed you without shedding blood… a stupid death, no glory in it”.

“… there is a glory in following our Destiny” commented the witch, as her voice seemed so frail, as if it was barely latched on a thread in her mouth and her eyes surrendered to that evidence, no exuberant strength or cursed eyes, she was just a woman.

One like Brida.

But she was smarter than her.

She had known this was all a gods’ play.

And Brida had discovered it painfully, meanwhile Skade had known all about this.

So, maybe it was time that Brida took control over something.

And did it in the rough way she had had men treating her.

She would have stolen everything and fought with her brutal force.

And she would have won, eventually.

“You bore me witch”.


End file.
